NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
155 
females, although it is possible that I may be mistaken, and that my original 
female did not return, but that a new pair seized the nest, and that the one I took 
to be the new swan laid all five eggs. Against this supposition is the fact that 
the one I take to be my original female came otf the river into the moat at my 
call, which the new one would not do till she was driven in by the other. I 
should be glad to know if your readers have experience of a similar case. 
Aliington Castle, Maidstone. Dudlky C. Falcke. 
April 26, 1904. 
136. The Methods of Lagado. — Not the least amusing part of Gulliver’s 
Travels is that which describes his visit to the Academy of Lagado in the king- 
dom of Laputa. VVe are not likely to forget the sage who “ had been eight 
years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers,” and who so 
touchingly appealed for help, as “it had been a very dear year for cucumbers.” 
It would be rash to affirm that none of his scholars are known among us now. 
Ifut I doubt whether any of the Lagado professors have at the present day so many 
representatives as that “ Universal Artist,” with his great design “ by a certain 
composition of gums, minerals and vegetables, outwardly applied, to prevent the 
growth of wool upon young lambs.” This eminent man has had, and I suspect 
has still, many followers among us, and sufficient justice has hardly been done 
him as the true originator of many modern popular ideas. 
I have never been an exhibitor, and am not very familiar with exhibitions, but 
from what I read from time to time, and from what I occasionally see, I may say 
that I am credibly informed, and do verily believe, that prizes have been sought 
and won for specimens, animal and vegetable, whose merit consisted in peculiari- 
ties, eccentricities, no' to say deformities, cultivated even at the expense of real 
beauty and usefulness. At one time we re.id of rabbits with ears of enormous and 
unwieldy length and breadth. I am not able to say whether prizes are now 
awarded for these. But in our poultry shows I more than suspect that honour 
and fame may be gained — strictly after the Lagado plan — by exhibiting fowls with 
exaggerated combs, preposterous top-knots, and feathers in the wrong places. So 
I have seen pictures showing what should be aimed at in prize canaries ; and this 
appeared to be a deformed shape and an unnatural and far less beautiful colour. 
And one may ask, what would not a horse-breeder give for a “strain ” in which 
the natural growth of the tail should never exceed the size of a shaving-brush ? 
Turning to vegetable examples, I will draw briefly on my own limited, every- 
day experience. We all, I suppose, admire the rich colour of the Pirns japonica. 
It has always seemed to me an interesting exan!ple of colour-blindness that a 
former friend of my own should have expressed himself unable to see any differ- 
ence in colour between its flower and leaf. But I pass every day by a shrub of 
this kind whose flowers are white, and, in my (perhaps prejudiced) opinion, a 
very poor thing it is. Once or twice a week I pass a garden, recently formed, in 
which are two or three bushes of the Ribes. But instead of the bright crimson- 
pink of the usual kind, all these have pale flowers of a nondescript tint, too pale 
for pink, too pinky for white. This must surely have come straight from Lagado, 
and the importer must be complimented on his complete success in eliminating 
the beauty and attractiveness of the more vulgar sort. If I look on the other side 
of the road I see in a roadside shrubbery some laburnums which in due course 
produce the familiar bright yellow flowers. But on several of them some pains- 
taking person has, with perverse ingenuity, budded (on the upper boughs) some 
sprays of laburnum or cytisus of a dull pinlc colour, producing thereby a most 
unpleasing result. The pink colour is of the poorest, and by no means blends 
well with the natural yellow. 
And here I stop, conscious that I have barely touched the fringe of a wide 
subject. But my object is to plead for justice to the memory of a great man. 
Those who have acted on his principles — and, to do them justice, with con- 
spicuous success — should not grudge him the honour that is his due. Palmam 
qui meruit, ferat. 
Olham, Maidstone. F. M. Millard. 
137. A very Long-styled Oxlip.— I noticed this week in a wood in 
Sussex an oxlip bearing flowers whose styles projected almost exactly three-eighths 
